The Edmonton Oilers and Vegas Golden Knights are set to begin a rematch of the 2023 second round on tonight. Just like the first iteration, Vegas will start with home ice, although there has been significant turnover in each roster. Vegas will be coming back with the goalie that finished the series for them in Adin Hill, while the Oilers will be starting Calvin Pickard, with the first iteration’s netminder in Stuart Skinner starting on the bench.
How to get over the Hill?
When Hill came in for Laurent Brossoit in 2023, it represented a turning point in the series. Edmonton had figured out their former netminder, but struggled to solve Hill for the rest of the series. Back in 2023, the main ways to target the 6’4″ netminder was to get him moving laterally, where his gloves would sink back leaving the top corners exposed, or make a pass early where he would have a longer push to get across. At the time, Hill seemed to settle for limited sightlines in traffic, something that does not seem as prevalent in his game anymore.
Kevin Woodley’s analysis on NHL.com shows a lot of the same patterns where Hill is vulnerable. Hill gave up the most goals on the year to his high glove. Woodley also noted that Hill’s flow off the rush gives longer initial pushes while the Team Canada backup sacrifices depth later in the play. Two notes are that Hill appears more likely to struggle in his recovery to the blocker side compared to the glove. This could open more opportunities for Ryan Nugent-Hopkins or Corey Perry/Zach Hyman on the power play compared to Leon Draisaitl who would play on the right dot. The Oilers could also take advantage of this by targeting Hill’s tendency of using his pads rather than his stick to make stops on the ice. The Oilers scored two goals on Hill this exact way during their game in December, where they won 6–3.
Another factor is Hill’s habit of not having an anchor leg in reverse vh, which will leave him exposed to the short side shelf shot that we’ve seen McDavid and Draisaitl pull off, while also leaving him late to the low-to-high one timer the Oilers love to use.
Looking over all the video from that 2023 series, Hill’s games against the Oilers since, and Hill’s first round against the Minnesota Wild, I think the Oilers will have to focus on getting Hill to move from right to left. There is a large percentage of Hill’s goals against that end up having some component of movement to his blocker side. Some of that is just beating Hill to the blocker post, but the Wild were able to frequently shoot against the grain back to the glove side.
According to Clear Sight Analytics, Vegas was bottom third in the league in five on five defensive environment. Even so, Hill was -2.73 GSAx in the opening round. Will that continue against the high powered Oilers offence?
Will Pickard stay in net
Calvin Pickard is expected to start Game 1. It’d be tough for a coach to go any other way with Pickard winning four straight against the Los Angeles Kings. That’s the most important part for the Oilers, but there were some areas that the Kings exposed in Pickard’s game that the Golden Knights will try to target.
The most obvious is Pickard’s vulnerability to the top corners. If there’s one obvious weakness in Pickard’s ability to track above his hands. L.A. was able to score multiple times on clean looks over his shoulders. The Kings have some high end shooters that helped make this possible, but Vegas is known to have the same type of talent in their lineup which could end up being problematic. His glove in particilcuar starts to drop when he moves laterally, so Edmonton’s defence’s ability to restrict puck movement will be paramount to the success of the veteran.
Pickard is not the tallest goalie either. As a result, Woodley noted that Pickard could be exposed during plays with traffic. His small frame and narrow butterfly meant that he was below league average at stopping those types of plays during the regular season and surrendered four such goals in the opening round of the playoffs.
Game by game, Pickard is proving me wrong, but I’ve been skeptical of his ability to play against top competition due to his challenges with skating. As a veteran, he attempts to make up for the lack of explosiveness with better reads, but this doesn’t always work. Pickard is stronger moving to his glove side down low, where the rotations are usually less awkward, compared to the blocker side where he gave up more goals along the ice. It is opposite once moving to his gloves as noted above. With some of his more awkward movement, Pickard can lose his angle, leaving one side of the net more exposed than the other.
According to Clear Sight Analytics, Vegas continues to have a rush based offence like they always seem to have under Bruce Cassidy. They were top 10 off the rush, mid third for in-zone, and top five on the power play in expected goals for. Pickard was -2.5 GSAx in the opening round. Will he be able to sustain that as the Oilers go further into the post season?
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